Tightening TRIPS: the Intellectual Property Provisions of Recent US Free Trade Agreements.” Trade Note No. 20

Over the past few years, the United States has pursued bilateral and re-gional free trade agreements (FTAs) in different parts of the world (table 1).This has marked a considerable shift in U.S. international trade diplomacy. While the U.S. Government entered into regional trade agreements in the past— notably in the case of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—it relied mostly on the multilateral trading system to advance the progressive opening of world markets and to create legally enforceable trading rules.1 Prominent in the recent set of bilateral FTAs are strong rules for the pro-tection of intellectual property rights (IPRs), a key market access interest of the United States—supported by private sector constituents who derive significant revenues from exports of intangible assets. Indeed, the trade promotion authority, under which these agreements were negotiated aims explicitly to promote intellec-tual property rules that “reflect a standard of protection similar to that found in United States law.”2 U.S. trading partners generally have more defensive negotiat-ing interests in intellectual property, but they are willing to commit to stronger intellectual property rules as a quid pro quo for concessions in other areas— notably preferential access to U.S. markets for agricultural and manufactured goods